Sexing the Terrorist:

Tracing the National Body at Abu Ghraib

For the vast majority, the specter of the racialized and homophobic violence documented at Abu Ghraib was an inexplicably unsettling sight. In this article Cait Keegan attempts to explain this discomfort by examining what these abuses and the public perception of them implied and revealed about the desire for an impermeable and purified American national body. Keegan reads the creation and implementation of the figure of the terrorist as a signifier for national incoherence and as a tool for the symbolic control and oppression of other socially undesirable groups, particularly queer people. The homosexual humiliation at Abu Ghraib, employing the terrorist body as a floating signifier, is interpreted to signal a new level of innovation in the use of homophobic terror as a technology of nationalistic militarization and expanding empire. Ultimately, Keegan argues that popular interpretations of Abu Ghraib disclose American society’s inability to recognize and defuse its own heterosexist practices.

Read the full paper...